


Children of Time (fixed)

by CptDorkery



Category: Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
Genre: Episode: s05e22 Children of Time, Eric Flint Assiti reference, F/M, FIx It, Time Travel, alternate timeline explanation, episode rewrite, guardian of forever (reference)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-13
Updated: 2018-06-13
Packaged: 2019-05-21 21:57:31
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,481
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14923562
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CptDorkery/pseuds/CptDorkery
Summary: Basically, this is how Children of Time should have ended.Kira has a whole heck of a lot more to think about.I've tried to write it so that you can follow what's happening even if you've never seen the episode, or don't remember all the details.





	Children of Time (fixed)

“Has everyone had a chance to record a message to their families?”

Benjamin Sisko turned to Chief Miles O'Brien, who nodded his head.

“I've downloaded the recordings into a Class IV probe,” O'Brien said. “It'll start transmitting a location signal as soon as it clears the barrier.”

“Launch the probe, Chief.”

At the captain's command Miles entered the command and the probe shot away from the Defiant on a heading that would take it through the wormhole and to Deep Space 9 in the alpha quadrant. The probe's memory bank contained a record of everything that had happened on the mission, including all sensor logs and staff analyses, and a final message from every crewman. The ship was not expected to make it home. In fact, that was the plan.

“It's time,” said Kira Nerys. Her face was set with the determination expected from the Bajoran major, but everyone on the bridge heard her words as the pronouncement of her own death sentence. That too was the plan.

Sisko ordered Lt. Commander Dax to transfer helm control to the autopilot and to raise shields. The Defiant flew torwards the temporal anomaly and its fate. The ship and crew would be thrown two hundred years into the past and be marooned on the gamma quadrant world below them, Kira would not receive the medical care she needed and would die, none of them would see their families or friends again... and the eight thousand people on the planet would continue to exist. In order for the planet's inhabitants to live, to have ever lived, the Defiant needed to be sacrificed. They had to fly straight through the anomaly.

“We're veering away from the anomaly!” Kira shouted.

“Try to override the autopilot.”

I can't,” Dax said from the helm.

Unable to control the ship's flight, the bridge officers watched their instruments as the Defiant flew around the temporal field and safely escaped the energy barrier surrounding the planet. They were safe, but at what cost?

“What happened?” Sisko demanded.

“Someone changed our flight plan,” O'Brien said, and after a hard look from Sisko added, “it wasn't me!”

“Scan the surface,” Sisko ordered, dreading what he knew he would hear. Since the Defiant was not thrown back in time, the crew had not been marooned on the planet and they had not founded the colony. No one would be on the planet. They couldn't be. The timeline had changed and the colonists had simply never existed. The planet would be empty of all intelligent life – that's the only possible thing sensors could show.

“Captain,” Kira said. “I don't know how this is possible...”

“What is it Major? What do you see?”

“Sir, the colony... it's still there. They're alive.”

\----------------------------

“Explain to me how this is possible, Dax.”

Jadzia and Yedrin opened their mouths to answer, paused to look at one another, and then turned their attention back to Sisko. Neither spoke, but Jadzia's eyebrow asked the question all by itself.

“Either Dax is fine. No, you know what? I'll hear from Jadzia Dax, if you don't mind.”

“As far as I can tell, Benjamin, what happened shouldn't have happened.”

“Yes, I am aware. And how do you explain it?”

“Simply put? All our theories of time travel, and how it works, are wrong.”

“Oh, is that all?”

The tension of the past few days was over. Somehow the colony was saved and the Defiant was in one piece. Benjamin had the right to indulge in a little dry humor, Jadzia reflected, letting a brief smile light up her face before beginning her explanation.

“We've always assumed that when someone went back in time that whatever changes they made would become part of our timeline,” Jadzia said.

“In this case,” Yedrin continued, “the Defiant went back in time two hundred years and was stranded on our world. We made a life for ourselves here, and the colony we have now is made up of descendants of that crew.”

“Descendants, plus Odo and the Dax symbiont,” Sisko added, nodding his head towards Yedrin.

“Right. So we thought of that as a change in our timeline,” Jadzia said. “Once we met our descendants, before going back in time, we thought that if we did anything which caused us not to go back then the colony would cease to exist in our timeline because we never founded the colony in the first place.”

Benjamin rubbed his eye with his fist. “Thinking about time travel gives me a headache.”

“Then get ready for it to get worse,” Jadzia said, “because we haven't gotten to the good part yet.”

“I can't wait.”

“It actually seems that the Flint-Assiti theory of time travel in the correct one,” Yedrin Dax said.

“Flint-Assiti...”

“Basically, it says that when someone, or something, goes back in time, a new timeline branches off at the moment the change takes place,” Jadzia said. “In this case when the Defiant went back in time they created a new universe. The universe that we are in right now.”

“So you are saying that crew, that Benjamin Sisko, that Dax... they were from a different timeline.”

“Exactly,” Jadzia said. “Let's call that Timeline Alpha. In Timeline Alpha the Defiant was stranded two hundred years in the past. That time travel created this timeline. Timeline Beta. In our timeline, or universe, whatever you want to call it, the colony has existed for two hundred years, founded because of actions in another timeline.”

“So then, whether or not we ourselves traveled back in time...” Benjamin trailed off.

“It doesn't affect the colony. Their existence does not depend on our actions. What we do in Timeline Beta has nothing to do with what they did Timeline Alpha.”

Sisko silently considered this for a few seconds. “But what about Kirk's Enterprise and Edith Keeler? They taught us at the academy that when she did not die when she was supposed to that the timeline changed. Humanity never left Earth, and the Federation ceased to have ever existed.”

“Jadzia and I discussed that,” Yedrin said. “That incident is what scientists have based our theories of time travel on. And the Edith Keeler incident, well, it was caused by the Guardian of Forever. And the Guardian is ...”

“The Guardian is what?”

“It's...hinky,” said Jadzia.

“Hinky,” Sisko repeated, and after a pause threw his head back with a short, explosive laugh.

 

\--------------------------------------

 

Odo carried the air of someone who didn't want to be where he was, doing what he was doing, but who was doing his duty as best he could. Kira sat up in her bunk and waited for him to speak.

“There's something you should know,” he said. “The other Odo, the one from the planet, came to Sickbay before he left the ship.”

“Oh?”

“He linked with me. Now I know everything that happened.”

Kira thought back to what “everything” encompassed, everything that Odo hadn't been around for because he was stuck in his liquid form while the ship had been in orbit around the planet. Finding the mostly human colony where one shouldn't have existed. Learning that the Defiant was fated to travel back in time and found the colony. The decision being made to preserve the colony's existence, even though it meant that she would die soon after and the rest of the crew would never see their families again.

But mostly she knew Odo meant that the other Odo, the one two hundred years older than he was, had taken the opportunity to tell her that he had feelings for her. That he loved her, and that he always had. That the older Odo has asked her to give this Odo a chance.

“The other day, when I told you about Shakaar and me not seeing each other anymore, you seemed so uncomfortable,” Kira said.

“I'd come to accept the fact that you were involved with someone else, then suddenly everything changed.”

“I don't know what to say. I'm still trying to sort everything out.”

”So am I. I think we both need time.” Odo paused. “There's something else you should know. The other Odo...he was responsible for changing the Defiant's flight plan.”

“Why?”

“So that you wouldn't have to die.”

“I can't believe it. Eight thousand people!” Kira yelled. “He was willing to kill eight thousand people so I would live? No! Not even kill. To keep them from ever having existed?

“He did it for you, Nerys. He loves you.”

“That makes it right?”

“I don't know. He thinks so.”

At that moment they both paused to consider something they had avoided thinking about. Odo, the other Odo, Timeline Alpha Odo, still existed. He was still around and he still loved her.

He loved her. And this Odo did as well.

“I'll see you in the morning,” Odo said. “We do indeed have a lot to sort through.”

**Author's Note:**

> I may explore the Odo/Kira/Odo love triangle more in future works. Or possibly not. Either way it's a fun possibility to think about.  
> Also, the universe may not think it can handle twice the Dax, but it is going to have to learn how to cope.


End file.
